The chance to carry out a Rolls-Royce Phantom review doesn't come around often - the last time there was a truly new flagship from Britain's most luxurious carmaker was 14 years ago. It's virtually impossible to overstate the impact of that 2003 car, for Rolls-Royce as a company and in the world of cars, so it's little wonder that the manufacturer took its time poring over every tiny detail. After all, this is the very definition of "difficult second album".

Design-wise, the 2017 car isn't a million miles away from its predecessor, following the tenets its older brother established - the wheels are roughly half the size of the flanks and the source of the body lines all flow from that large grille. But this car's one of few vehicles that places as much, if not more emphasis on the interior's virtues than the exterior styling.

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Inside, it's as fresh and new and lovely as you would hope from a brand-new £300,000 barge with wood and leather in abundance. But to move it along, there's a new feature that allows owners, who CEO Torsten Müller-Ötvös found to be art lovers, to indulge their other passions on the fly. It's now its own art gallery, with a special dashboard that can be fitted with anything the owner chooses, from a Matisse to a bespoke piece, which the brand has already commissioned several new artists to create.

Over in the engine room there are also changes, albeit slightly more prosaic. It's powered by a 6.75-litre V12 with two turbochargers and, because of its sheer size, the engineers have fitted four-wheel steering to help it navigate those tricky Mayfair mewses. The monocoque shell is made out of aluminium too, which has not only made it (slightly) more fleet of foot, but made it even quieter in the cabin than the old model.

We'll have to wait until later in the year to get our hands on one for a test drive, but until then there's little to suggest that Rolls-Royce hasn't absolutely nailed the difficult second album. It's as imperious and otherly as the outgoing car and tailored to the micron for the company's most elite customers. You want one. And so does your art collection.

The Rolls-Royce Phantom is dead. Long live the Rolls-Royce Phantom

The new Rolls-Royce Phantom: pricey and priceless

The all-new Phantom is the biggest, most expensive car Rolls-Royce will make. And thanks to a new gallery feature, which allows owners to display artworks on the move, they could become quite literally priceless.